Walsham-le-Willows is a village in Suffolk

Suffolk

Suffolk is a non-metropolitan county of historic origin in East Anglia, England. It has borders with Norfolk to the north, Cambridgeshire to the west and Essex to the south. The North Sea lies to the east...

, England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

, located around 4 km south-east of Stanton

Stanton, Suffolk

Stanton is village situated in north Suffolk, about nine miles north-east of Bury St. Edmunds, on the A143 road to Diss. Close to the village lies the former WW II airfield RAF Shepherds Grove, where American forces were based. One of the main landmarks in the village is the fine restored windmill...

, and lies in the Mid Suffolk

Mid Suffolk

Mid Suffolk is a local government district in Suffolk, England. Its council is based in Needham Market, and the largest town is Stowmarket.The district was formed on 1 April 1974 by the merger of the Borough of Eye, Stowmarket urban district, Gipping Rural District, Hartismere Rural District and...

 council district. Queen Elizabeth I

Elizabeth I of England

Elizabeth I was queen regnant of England and Ireland from 17 November 1558 until her death. Sometimes called The Virgin Queen, Gloriana, or Good Queen Bess, Elizabeth was the fifth and last monarch of the Tudor dynasty...

 had granted Walsham-le-Willows to Nicholas Bacon, Lord Keeper of the Great Seal

Lord Keeper of the Great Seal

The Lord Keeper of the Great Seal of England, and later of Great Britain, was formerly an officer of the English Crown charged with physical custody of the Great Seal of England. This evolved into one of the Great Officers of State....

, in 1559.

The village's football team, Walsham-le-Willows F.C.

Walsham-le-Willows F.C.

Walsham le Willows Football Club is an English football club based in Walsham-le-Willows, Suffolk. The club are currently members of the Eastern Counties League Premier Division and play at Sumner Road.The club is affiliated to the Suffolk County FA....

, play in the Eastern Counties League

Eastern Counties Football League

The Eastern Counties Football League is an English football league at levels 9 and 10 of the English football league system. It currently contains clubs from Norfolk, Suffolk, northern Essex and eastern Cambridgeshire, and is a feeder to the regional divisions of the Isthmian League and Southern...

.

Because the village is documented unusually fully in surviving records of the time, the Cambridge

University of Cambridge

The University of Cambridge is a public research university located in Cambridge, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest university in both the United Kingdom and the English-speaking world , and the seventh-oldest globally...

 historian John Hatcher chose to use it as the setting for his semi-fictionalised account of the effects of the mid-14th-century plague epidemic

Black Death

The Black Death was one of the most devastating pandemics in human history, peaking in Europe between 1348 and 1350. Of several competing theories, the dominant explanation for the Black Death is the plague theory, which attributes the outbreak to the bacterium Yersinia pestis. Thought to have...

in England, The Black Death: A Personal History (2008).

Sources

• Kenneth Melton Dodd (editor), The Field-Book of Walsham-le-Willows 1577 (Ipswich: Suffolk Records Society, 1974).